AT&T and Samsung today announced the upcoming availability of the Samsung Captivate, a Galaxy S smartphone.

The Android 2.1-powered Samsung Captivate will bring users a fully integrated entertainment, messaging and social networking experience. The Captivate's set of Web-based features is maximized with the addition of AT&T's High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 Mbps technology.

The Captivate is powered by Android 2.1 platform, with support of Google Mobile Services including Android Market, Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Google Talk and more. The Captivate also features Samsung's 4-inch Super AMOLED display screen technology, a 1 GHz Samsung Hummingbird Application Processor and Samsung Social Hub, a feature that integrates the user's social networking services, messages, personal and business email, calendars and contacts.

In addition, the Samsung Captivate is designed with a six-axis sensor that combines the smartphone's accelerometer and gyroscope to provide a smooth gaming experience when the user is tilting the device up or down or panning the phone to the left or right. The Captivate's user interface also supports a series of touch screen gestures capabilities including multi-touch pinch, long tap and zoom and vertical and horizontal swiping.

The Captivate is also outfitted with 3D sound capabilities, giving the user surround-sound stereo quality, when listening on hard-wired headphones.

In addition, AT&T customers who choose Captivate can take advantage of AT&T Address Book. A Web-based service, AT&T Address Book syncs contacts to an online address book so customers can access and manage their mobile contacts from their handset ? or their PC. Also available to users at no additional charge is access to AT&T's entire national Wi-Fi network -- any Captivate with the Wi-Fi turned on will automatically connect when in range.

The Captivate also features Samsung's All Share application, which enables inter-device connectivity through DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) technology, allowing users to send user-generated video content wirelessly to other DLNA-enabled devices, such as TV's, monitors and laptops.

Other features of the Captivate include a 5.0-megapixel camera/ camcorder with auto-focus and HD video recording (720p), MP3 player, 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and expandable memory for photos, videos and music, up to 16 GB. This combined with an on-board 16 GB of storage allows for up to 32 GB of capacity for music and video.

The Captivate also includes AT&T Navigator, which offers voice-guided and visual turn-by-turn GPS driving directions with automatic reroute, full-color maps, and real-time traffic alerts and AT&T Family Map, which gives families the ability to track a child's location from a PC or cell phone and request location updates at any time.

Additional key specifications of the Captivate include Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n), full HTML browser with tap & hold zoom), Bluetooth 3.0 technology. The Captivate also includes tri-band 3G connectivity and quad-band GSM technology, which allows AT&T customers to make calls in more than 220 countries and download data in more than 195.

The Samsung Captivate is scheduled for release in the coming months at AT&T retail locations nationwide or at http://www.att.com/wireless.